Education Background Of Chairman, Ownership Property And The Appointment Of Academic Independent Directors

In order to improve the management level of listed companies in China,and to protect the interests of minority shareholders,China has formally exercised the independent director system since 2001.For a long time,the domestic and foreign academic world have paid much attention to the research of independent director.However,most of them focus on the supervisory role of independent directors,and the discussion on the appointment of the independent directors of the listed company is rare,which makes the lack of theoretical basis and experience support to improve the governance effect and perfect the arrangement of independent directors system.During the observation period in this paper(2010-2014),the number of independent directors accounted for 52.35%of the total number of independent directors in China.According to the reality of our country,the academic independent directors have become the main source of the independent directors.Therefore,it is of great significance to study the appointment of independent directors of listed companies to perfect the independent director system and improve corporate governance of listed companies.The independent director system of China stipulates that the board of directors has the right to nominate independent directors.Therefore,the board of directors plays a very important role in the appointment of independent directors of listed companies.The chairman as the leader can affect the operation and decision of the entire board of directors to some extent,so as to affect listed companies to choose their independent directors.This paper creatively relates the educational background of the chairman with the appointment of academic independent directors and adopts the psychological theory of interpersonal attraction to try to explain the relationship between them.In order to make the research of this paper more practical,in the empirical analysis of the appointment of academic independent directors,this paper also examines the impact of ownership property,taking China's specific national conditions into account.In this paper,the appointment situation during 2010—2014 of academic independent directors of A-share companies listed in Shanghai or Shenzhen Stock Exchange was analyzed by descriptive statistics.Academic independent directors are further divided into those who work in the universities which is well-known or in Beijing or Shanghai.And the appointment situation of these two types of Academic independent directors was also analyzed.Based on the principal-agent theory,upper echelons theory,interpersonal attraction theory and public pressure theory,research hypotheses are put forward in three aspects:when choosing the academic independent directors and academic independent directors from well-known universities or from Beijing or shanghai,(1)the impact of the education background of chairman on listed company;(2)the impact of ownership property on listed companies;(3)the impact of interaction effect between the education background of chairman and ownership property on the listed companies.This paper introduces the chairman education background and ownership property variables,using multiple linear regression to test their influence on Listed Companies in choosing academic independent directors.The results show that:(1)the higher education background the chairman has,the higher the tendency for listed companies to choose academic independent directors and the academic independent directors from universities in Beijing or Shanghai.Education background of chairman has no significant impact on the appointment of the academic independent directors from well-known universities.(2)Ownership property has no significant influence on the appointment of academic independent directors and the academic independent directors from Beijing or Shanghai universities.However,in the listed companies that employ academic independent directors,compared with non-state-owned enterprises,state-owned enterprises do not tend to choose the academic independent directors who work in famous universities.(3)For state-owned enterprises,the higher education background the chairman has,the less inclined to choose the academic independent directors.For the listed companies that employ academic independent directors,the higher education background the chairman has,the less inclined to choose the academic independent directors who work in well-known universities,but the more inclined to choose the academic independent directors from universities in Beijing or shanghai.Finally,this paper puts forward some policy recommendations to perfect the independent director system and improve the management level of listed companies.This paper argues that the nomination and election system of independent directors should be improved.So the independent director system can get better development in our country and play its due role.